snark: a (well-deserved) attitude of mocking irreverence and sarcasm

March 29, 2019

A bill in the Oregon legislature seems like a backdoor way to get a Third Bridge built in Salem. At least, that's how I and quite a few others view HB 2974.

HB 2974 is sponsored by Rep. Paul Evans, who I usually agree with. But after I read the following email message from a group opposed to the bill, I became convinced that HB 2974 is a bad idea.

One big reason: four people elected to a Special Bridge District, plus an ODOT representative, would get to increase the taxes of everybody in Marion, Polk, Linn, and Yamhill counties -- without the people in those counties getting to vote on whether they wanted to pay for whatever new bridge those five people dreamed up. Or, whether they'd ever use the bridge.

If you agree HB 2974 is a bad idea, send in testimony opposing the bill as soon as possible, since a hearing on the bill is scheduled for next Monday, April 1, 3 pm, Hearing Room C, before the House Committee on Rules.

HB 2974 is a bill from Representative Evans that attempts to get around the City of Salem's recent decision regarding a 3rd bridge across the Willamette River. It was just scheduled for a hearing and possible work session in the House Rules Committee this Monday, April 1, at 3:00 pm.

We need your help to stop this bill.

The Rules Committee members need to hear from as many people as possible ASAP in opposition to the bill, and people need to show up in person to testify against the bill this Monday.

HB 2974 authorizes formation of a bridge district in the Salem area, consisting of Linn, Marion, Polk, and Yamhill counties. The bridge district would have the authority to levy property taxes to plan, finance, construct, operate, and maintain bridges over Willamette River in the Salem region. The district board would consist of four members, one elected from each of the four counties and one member representing the Department of Transportation.

Here's why this bill is NOT needed:

It overrides the recent decision of the Salem City Council after years of thoughtful debate.

Some locations for a bridge that have been discussed would adversely impact the most valuable farmland in the state.

The Bridge District will have the authority to tax property owners in 4 counties, most of whom will never use the bridge during the hours of congestion.

If tolling is also required to pay for the bridge, drivers will travel another route to avoid the cost, which means all other neighboring bridges will also need to be tolled

We are trying to reduce our dependence on traffic throughout the region, and adding another route will merely increase that traffic volume.

Building another bridge and more road miles will increase driving, adding to greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the opposite directing Oregonians want to go.

The project is estimated to cost more than $400 million, and therefore consume all or most local transportation investment dollars.

ODOT and the City of Salem need to come together to solve the congestion, which occurs only at rush hour times or during infrequent cases of emergency.

Instead, actions such as improved ramp and traffic control measures at the feet of the current bridges, must be taken.

Seismic retrofits of the existing bridges are much cheaper than building a new bridge.

March 26, 2019

This is obvious to anyone who visits the area. I go to a Tai Chi class on Court Street three days a week around 4 to 7 pm. I'm bothered by the trash, people curled up in sleeping bags, shopping carts filled to overflowing with people's possessions.

Along with feeling bad about the plight of the homeless, I also don't like what homeless people are doing to downtown Salem. It isn't pleasant to see shopping carts on the sidewalk. Nor is it pleasant to park in the Chemeketa Parkade and walk down stairs reeking of urine.

Recently I parked in that garage on the second floor. A homeless person was sitting on the stairs leading down to ground level, talking on his phone, with stuff spread over the full width of several stair steps. He had to move some things aside so I could get by.

An hour and a half later, after my Tai Chi class, he was in the same spot, but standing up talking on his phone. A woman walked up the stairs just ahead of me. I thought, “If I find it disturbing to encounter a homeless person on the stairs, I wonder how a woman walking up the stairs by herself feels."

We've got to get over a reluctance to talk honestly about downtown's homeless problem. It's possible to both (1) feel compassion toward homeless people and (2) feel bad about how homeless people are making downtown Salem less pleasant for visitors, residents, and business owners.

Screenshot from video shared in the blog post linked to below

Last month I shared an opinion piece by Carole Smith, who lives downtown and also leases space to several downtown businesses: "Downtown Salem's homeless problem is hurting businesses." Below are further thoughts that Smith emailed to me, along with information she's received from several downtown business owners about how the homeless are affecting them.

I'm planning to write another blog post about what the business owners said -- keeping their names confidential given how strong feelings run when there's any talk about restricting homeless people in downtown Salem.

Which is what Carole Smith suggests below: a ban on lying on sidewalks between 8 am and 11 pm, along with some other ideas. These proposals deserve serious consideration, even though a similar "sit-lie" proposal was rejected by the City Council in 2017. Some business owners tried to resurrect the idea in 2018, but it wasn't recommended by a Downtown Homeless Solutions Task Force.

UPDATE: Someone drew my attention to the Ninth Circuit ruling regarding homeless people sleeping in public places, like sidewalks. After looking at the ruling, and some news stories about it, it seems that the City of Salem could justify an ordinance that prohibits lying on sidewalks during a specific time period, like 8 am to 11 pm, since the ruling says:

Our holding is a narrow one. Like the Jones panel, “we in no way dictate to the City that it must provide sufficient shelter for the homeless, or allow anyone who wishes to sit, lie, or sleep on the streets . . . at any time and at any place.

... [footnote] Naturally, our holding does not cover individuals who do have access to adequate temporary shelter, whether because they have the means to pay for it or because it is realistically available to them for free, but who choose not to use it. Nor do we suggest that a jurisdiction with insufficient shelter can never criminalize the act of sleeping outside. Even where shelter is unavailable, an ordinance prohibiting sitting, lying, or sleeping outside at particular times or in particular locations might well be constitutionally permissible.

Anyway, here's part of what Carole Smith said in her email to me. You'll see that she balances compassion for homeless people with concern for their impact on downtown businesses.

I have been thinking a lot about homelessness, what causes it, what might be done about it, and hopefully how to relieve innocent citizens from having to deal with a national crisis on their own.

Addiction and mental illness are both diseases. No one choses to be mentally ill or addicted. It happens to people just like cancer or many other diseases just happen to people. Why do we treat people with these two diseases differently than people with cancer, lupus, pneumonia, ringworm, etc?

Both behaviors are classified as a “disease” in the United States, yet we continue to treat the victims of these diseases as if continuing on with their disease is a choice. It isn’t. They can’t help being mentally ill or addicted to alcohol or drugs. It's a disease they have little or no ability to control.

So, how do we help people with diseases?

When you frame the question that way people have to acknowledge that diseases can, and should be, treated. How is it in the best interest of a citizen to sleep on sidewalks in freezing weather? If a child did this they would be in protective custody immediately. Why not adults who cannot take care of themselves? Why are they allowed to live in dangerous conditions?

Where has our sense of humanity and compassion gone?

The homeless need services. They need a home where they feel safe and are protected while they work on controlling their disease, if they have one. A home where they can be monitored to take their medications and counseling to help them cope with their problems more successfully. The same for addiction treatment.

These are solvable problems but government doesn’t want to be bogged down by illnesses that are lifelong. Public officials prefer that citizens deal with the fall out from mental illness and addiction. We have to sweep up trash everyday, wash sidewalks, destroy needles and other drug paraphernalia, recycle the cardboard, hose out urine and feces from our doorways.

And the homeless come back every night and begin the cycle all over again.

One solution to the homeless problem is to provide police services downtown at 8 AM each morning to wake the homeless and ask them to pack up for the day. Then at 9 AM, the Downtown Clean Team comes through downtown hosing sidewalks and picking up garbage from homeless campers.

The city budgeted $90,000 this year for “Clean Team” and $60,000 in next year's budget. Why do they clean in the afternoon instead of before the shops open each morning? It wouldn’t cost any more, just change the time they clean.

We need a city ordinance that no one can be prone on public property between 8 AM and 11 PM.

Homeless citizens would be welcome to sit on benches but not to lay down, same for sidewalks. We have had homeless citizens sleeping until 3 in the afternoon in front of our building for weeks. Also, all shopping carts would have to be off sidewalks by 10 AM and moved into a designated area in a public park or parking garage.

Last week one of my tenants told me she made $22 of sales the day before. No one can stay in business when sales are hurt that badly. Another tenant sold $1,500 in November but his rent is $2,400 a month. Other businesses are choosing to move out of downtown and our customers are gone.

Another fact many people are unaware of is that the type of homeless has changed dramatically.

In the past we had homeless people who had worked jobs, had families but had lost a job, had a medical emergency, or other bad luck. They mostly camped along the river away from the public. Today, the homeless population is much older and sicker. They have problems that prohibit them from using the services of the Union Gospel Mission.

To enter the UGM, you have to be alcohol and drug free. To avail yourself of the beds in the UGM, you have to submit to chapel and religious teaching.

The addicts cannot enter the UGM because of their addiction, and the mentally ill people simply cannot sleep with 200 other men in a room. They get claustrophobic. Their illness makes it more comfortable for them to sleep outside so they can breathe. And certainly their needs are far beyond anything the downtown business community can help with.

It appears to me that Americans are more compassionate about their pets than their fellow humans.

When a pet is homeless, it is rounded up, gets free medical attention, sheltered, fed, and is adopted to a new home. We don’t treat our homeless human neighbors half that well. It is shameful that we pay our taxes but the government we are funding has washed its hands of its responsibility to provide services.

Anyway, we are struggling for our very survival downtown.

Businesses are being damaged everyday, customers are being driven off, businesses are checking their leases for expiration dates so they can move out of downtown, and the homeless are provided no services or help.

UPDATE: Carole Smith just sent me this.

If you want a bit of good news in your article, the City of Salem has $2.5 million in their proposed budget for NEXT year [2019-20] to fund the Homelss Task Force recommendations. I assume it will pay for storage for their shopping carts, 24/7 restroom availability, garbage and laundry facilities AND the purchase and renovation of the Arches building north of downtown.

They are using Urban Renewal funds for that purchase. You should also note they are taking $5 million of Urban Renewal for Police Station improvements when they said they WOULD NOT. So, the public is getting the police station they voted down.

March 24, 2019

Sorry, Trump supporters. I realize you think the Mueller report finding no collusion with Russia justifies a victory lap, with images of disappointed Democrats dancing through your heads.

Think again.

I'm a Democrat who is feeling pretty darn good right now. Here's four reasons why.

(1) Impeachment is even less likely now. Democratic leaders in Congress haven't been pushing for impeachment of Trump. Nancy Pelosi has said that she is against starting impeachment proceedings unless there's a bipartisan consensus in favor of this. Which will never happen.

I suspect that impeachment now is even less likely, since apparently there's no smoking gun evidence against Trump in the Mueller report. This is good news for Democrats and bad news for Republicans -- since impeachment would fire up the GOP base in the 2020 election.

(2) Obstruction of justice remains a hot issue. Well-informed legal analysts on MSNBC made some great arguments about Mueller's lack of a conclusion about whether Trump obstructed justice. Attorney General Barr said that he independently concluded that there wasn't enough evidence to justify an obstruction of justice case.

This was a dubious thing for Barr to do.

He is a Trump appointee. He wrote a 19 page memo in 2018 arguing that likely Trump couldn't be found to have obstructed justice. So his credibility on this issue is very low. Democrats will surely question Barr in an open committee hearing about his conclusion in today's 4-page Mueller report summary regarding obstruction of justice. This will keep the issue alive.

(3) Good stuff for Dems likely lies in the report. Barr only included a few brief direct quotes from Mueller's report in the summary he released today. I suspect once Congressional Democrats are able to read the report itself, hopefully along with the underlying documents, quite a bit of good stuff for Dems and bad stuff for Trump will come to light.

This will be especially true on the obstruction of justice front, but it's hard for me to believe that additional evidence of contacts with Russians by people associated with the Trump campaign isn't in Mueller's report. Maybe this doesn't rise to the level of collusion or conspiracy. It sure won't make Trump look good, though.

(4) Other investigations continue on. Legal analysts are fond of saying that the Mueller investigation likely is the least of Trump's worries. The Southern District of New York is delving into issues that could end up being much more serious for Trump, building in part on Michael Cohen's cooperation with investigators regarding Trump's shady financial dealings, the Stormy Daniels payoff just before the 2016 election. etc.

Trump is going to be in legal trouble all the way through election day 2020, most likely. Maybe his base won't be bothered by this. Probably independent voters will be, though. I remain confident that Trump is going to be a one-term president. He can proclaim all he wants about "No collusion!" but this won't be the issue that decides the election.

Rather, Trump's lack of character and his bad policies will lead to a Democrat being elected president in 2020.

March 18, 2019

Raul Marquez. David Salinas. Remember those names when you fill out your ballot for the May 21 Special District Election where three board members of the Salem-Keizer School District will be elected.

Then, vote for Marquez and Salinas!

Last Saturday I got to hear Raul Marquez speak and answer questions at a house party hosted by Salem city councilor Tom Andersen and his wife, Jessica Maxwell.

David Salinas and Raul Marquez

He's a really impressive young man.

This photo of Salinas and Marquez was shared on Facebook by Councilor Andersen. Salinas couldn't make the house party due to a family emergency. From what I've heard about Salinas, I'm confident that he'll also be an excellent addition to the seven-member school board.

A big reason why was brought up by Marquez: "No one on the school board looks like me. Yet over 50% of the students are people of color."

Here's what the current Salem-Keizer school board looks like.

Electing Marquez and Salinas will add some much-needed diversity to the Salem-Keizer School Board. Wiser decisions are made when a group is composed of people with varying backgrounds and experiences.

At the house party Marquez spoke of his low-income upbringing. Enjoying music, he had to rent an instrument during his time at McKay High School because his family couldn't afford to buy one. He said that it wasn't the highest quality instrument, not surprisingly.

Impressively, Marquez led a successful campaign to raise $400,000 for a homeless youth shelter, Taylor's House. Here's excerpts from a Salem Reporter story:

Taylor’s House is Salem’s newest shelter, a home for teens and young people between 11 and 18 who are homeless or in foster care and don’t have another place to go. Employees work with teens on completing high school or a GED, finding work and resolving family problems.

...Taylor’s House opened in December [2018], less than a year after then-high school student Raul Marquez presented the idea to the United Way of the Mid-Willamette Valley’s board and asked for their support.

Marquez walked out of that meeting with a commitment of $100,000, and quickly raised an additional $300,000, including $200,000 from the Legislature, to buy and renovate the small blue house in a residential neighborhood just north of downtown.

Raul Marquez now is a Willamette University student. He told us house party guests, "I know how to listen and act collaboratively with others."

Sounds like perfect qualifications for the first young Latino Salem-Keizer school board member.

The March issue features both humor and some serious examination of how the City of Salem has been managing -- or rather, mismanaging -- a Downtown Parking District tax that originally supported a downtown association and maintenance of parking garages.

Here's a story in the March issue that talks about how that money has been frittered away on other budget items by Mayor "Chuckles" Bennett and other city officials.

A chart on page two of the March issue shows that after 32 years of parking tax money going to funding for downtown projects and support of a downtown association, from 2012 to 2017 the City Manager kept all of the funds.

This happened during the reign of City Manager Linda Norris, with the willing connivance of then City Councilor Chuck Bennett. I reported on this debacle in a couple of blog posts. I'll share an excerpt from each.

A recent Statesman Journal story, "Will latest downtown group succeed?," only tells part of the sorry tale of how Norris did away with the existing downtown association so she could personally rule over how funds provided by businesses are spent.

...The SJ story by Michael Rose reveals that City Manager Exalted Emperor Linda Norris rules without the usual open government transparency demanded by Oregon's public records law.

After taking control of the EID money contributed by downtown property owners, Norris doesn't allow anyone to know what is going on with her and the "hand-picked" yes-people she has chosen to be her lackeys.

...This is amazing. Amazingly disturbing.

The top non-elected city official dissolves a duly organized downtown organization so she can take control of the group's money. Then chooses to keep records of her Imperial Pronouncements secret. I can't believe this would be tolerated even in Tony Soprano's New Jersey, much less in supposedly squeaky-clean Oregon.

A few days ago I talked with someone in-the-know about how the Salem (Oregon) City Manager, Linda Norris, ended up controlling on her own $215,000 in Economic Improvement District funds paid by downtown businesses.

It was a lengthy conversation. This person asked to talk with me because he/she was so disturbed about how the EID was handled, and liked my blog-reporting on other downtown issues.

I was on the phone with this person for about 90 minutes. I learned a lot about how the City of Salem ended up cancelling the contract Salem Downtown Partnership had to administer the Economic Improvement District (EID) money.

The headline, so to speak, is this:

Norris and other City of Salem staff set up Salem Downtown Partnership to fail. Instead of working cooperatively and collaboratively with this duly-selected organization that represented downtown businesses, the City undermined its efforts in various ways.

Now, admittedly this is the opinion of only one person. But this person was in a position to be very well informed about what happened during the period Salem Downtown Partnership (SDP) had the EID contract.

And, no, this person wasn't either of the key businesspeople who got SDP up and running -- Carole Smith and Eric Kittleson. He or she prefers to remain anonymous.

Downtown Cherry Pits isn't enamored with a wanna-be, but isn't really, "downtown association" that goes by the name of the Salem Main Street Association or Salem Lame Street Association. Here's how the January 2019 issue describes the group.

It does indeed seem strange that a private group with a self-selected board of directors is acting as if it were a genuine downtown association -- which it clearly isn't. I wrote about the drawbacks of the Salem Main Street Association, and past downtown association follies by city officials, in "Here's why Salem needs a genuine downtown association."

Salem no longer has a downtown association. We need one. What happened at last night's City Council meeting is only one of many reasons why.

But before I explain what transpired at the meeting, a bit of relevant history about how downtown lost its downtown association is in order. I wrote about this in a couple of blog posts.

Rather, it is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization with a self-selected board of directors. Meaning, the board established by the founders chooses new board members. Since there aren't any members -- such as downtown business owners -- Salem Main Street Association isn't at all like a real downtown association.

...I get the impression that Salem Main Street Association is angling to be treated like a downtown association without actually being one. I also have a suspicion that Mayor Bennett and other City officials want to have parking meters installed downtown, and they see the Salem Main Street Association as a willing accomplice in helping to make that happen.

March 11, 2019

Excellent news! A Strong Salem group has emerged on Facebook that seeks to do a heck of a lot more than just exist in cyberspace.

If you're on Facebook, join the group and get in on the ground floor of what promises to be a force for positive change in this town. For example, one of the first posts on Strong Salem talks about the Our Salem effort aimed at updating the Comprehensive Plan.

A primary motivation for starting up this group is to keep a close eye on the the "Our Salem" project at the City, which is a multi-year effort to revise the Salem Comprehensive Plan. The webpage below has lots of information about this you may want to review. As meetings are scheduled in the future we will work to notify everyone so that we can be fully engaged in the process. Our goal is to bring a lot of Strong Towns thinking to the revision of our comprehensive plan.

I first learned about Strong Towns, an organization with a national presence, when its founder -- Chuck Marohn -- gave a talk at the Salem Library in 2016. Before the talk, Marohn got a tour of Salem from some locals.

(1) End our Ponzi Scheme development approach.This truth is at the core of the Strong Towns philosophy: almost always, building new roads, water lines, sewers, and such doesn't pay off in the long-term. Even if private developers pay the full bill for the initial infrastructure construction, the increased taxes generated by the new development isn't nearly enough to pay for maintenance of what has been built.

Roads need to be repaired. Water and sewer lines break, or need to be replaced.

So since the new development isn't generating enough revenue to pay for long-term maintenance, Salem has to keep playing the Ponzi Scheme game: keep building new stuff that produces short-term revenue, but long-term debt.

(2) Fix what we have first; build new stuff last."We are fools if we build more," Marohn, who toured Salem yesterday morning, said. He made similar negative comments about the $500 million proposed Third Bridge several times during his talk.

As noted above, his main theme was that cities can't afford to build costly infrastructure that costs way MORE money to maintain over coming decades. "How much does your tax base have to go up to pay for this project?" he asked.

The answer is that there is no way the economic benefit of the Third Bridge is going to exceed the costs. This is how cities like Salem go broke: they make stupid, rather than smart, decisions about how to grow.

(3) Downtown and lower-income neighborhoods need to be priority #1.Last night Marohn showed other slides that gave a graphical view of the most economically vital areas of a typical town. It isn't suburban places like south Commercial Street. Rather, it is the downtown area, and the older more densely populated neighborhoods that surround downtown.

THIS is where City officials should concentrate on spending public funds. But they aren't.

The core of Salem is a net financial plus for the City of Salem, while sprawling suburban development is a net minus. So why is so much attention given to expensive road improvements in the suburbs, when that money would be much more wisely spent on bike paths, neighborhood greenways, streetscaping, and such in Salem's central area?

Answer: the unwise Ponzi Scheme mentality.

(4) Stop stupid subsidies to developers and corporations.Marohn was highly critical of the tax subsidies City officials routinely give to both local Salem developers (like Mountain West Investments for the old Boise Cascade site along the riverfront) and corporations seeking an incentive to locate here (like property tax breaks given to occupants of the Mill Creek Corporate Center).

He said that tax subsidies no longer work, so it doesn't pay to offer them, adding "We have a name for paying someone to love you." Or more accurately, pretend to love you.

The City of Salem shouldn't be prostituting itself to lure developers and corporations into its economic development fantasy room. As is evident by the fact that Portland and Eugene are kicking Salem's butt when it comes to attracting high-growth, high-wage companies, Marohn said it is important for us to "build up our cultural presence so high-quality people move here."

(5) Embrace bottom-up, not top-down, development.Marohn started off his talk by showing photos of his home town in Minnesota in the early 1900s. Here's a similar one of Salem that I found online.

He pointed out that back then cities didn't have complicated zoning codes, rooms full of planners, voluminous rules and regulations. They just grew. What worked, remained and was built on. What didn't work, faded away.

This was also true for Ur and Rome, Marohn said. Humans have experimented with what makes for a vibrant, vital, livable city for thousands of years. In the not-so-old days, Salem and other towns grew organically, from the bottom-up.

But when an autocentric era really took off after World War II, the United States began a very rushed experiment with suburban sprawl and car-focused urban planning. The experiment has failed, in large part because people haven't sat back and taken a calm, cool look at its results.

Since at least around the middle of the 20th century, the leaders of most North American cities have had Shiny New Toy Syndrome. We have expanded outward at an unprecedented rate, building vastly more roads, pipes, pumps, and power lines than ever before—simply because those things are new, and new growth shows as a big win on the budget sheet.

March 06, 2019

Let me start off by saying that I'm not out to demonize people who mistakenly believe that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. Those people simply are misinformed.

I'm pretty sure that most of those involved with the anti-vaccine movement are quite different from global warming deniers.

The fossil fuel industry uses false information to keep money flowing into their coffers. Sure, pharmaceutical companies do make money from from vaccines, but vaccines are safe and effective.

(Some do have side effects, such as the new shingles vaccine that my wife and I had brief bad reactions to, but we were pleased to trade those side effects for a greatly reduced risk of getting shingles.)

The 2019 Oregon legislature is doing the right thing by considering a bill that would eliminate the ability of parents to deny their children the measles vaccine because of philosophical or religious reasons.

As public health officials work to tamp down a measles outbreak in the Portland metro area, Oregon lawmakers are preparing to take up legislation that would increase the number of children vaccinated for the disease.

State Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, confirmed to OPB on Thursday that he’s ordered up a bill to eliminate a provision of Oregon law that allows parents to forego vaccinations for their kids because of religious or philosophical reasons.

This makes so much sense, it's hard to see why anybody would oppose the bill. Children's health -- even their lives, since measles used to kill 400 to 500 Americans a year before vaccines were introduced -- shouldn't be held hostage to their parents' mistaken belief that vaccines are harmful.

A major decade-long study has found there is no link between the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine and autism, even among children with other risk factors for the disorder.

The study examined every child born in Denmark between 1999 and 2010, a group of more than 650,000.

The study found no increased risk of developing autism after getting the MMR vaccine, no clustering of autism cases among children who were given the vaccine, and no increase in the rate of autism among susceptible children who were given the vaccine.

What's bothersome is that so many parents aren't willing to look at the scientific evidence. Their false beliefs lead them to become strong opponents of efforts to increase vaccination rates by taking away the ability of parents to deny their children health-promoting vaccines for anything other than medical reasons.

After three hours of testimony on a bill that would eliminate most vaccine exemptions, 180 people still waited to speak their minds. Nearly all of them were there to oppose House Bill 3063, which the Oregon Legislature has taken up in the midst of one of the largest measles outbreaks the Pacific Northwest has ever seen.

The chairwoman of the House Committee on Health Care prioritized people who had traveled from within Oregon to get to the Capitol, and about 75 people were able to speak. Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Lake Oswego, said that as of the 3 p.m. start time, more than 1,000 written documents had been submitted for the record at such a rapid pace that workers putting the documents online couldn’t keep up.

It's really disturbing that these anti-vaxxers are being duped by medical professionals who either aren't familiar with vaccine science, or choose to ignore that science for reasons I'm unable to fathom. The Oregonian story says:

However, groups that oppose mandatory vaccinations are effective at turning out large crowds to quash these efforts in many states. Oregonians for Medical Freedom, the leading group that opposes vaccinations, was at Thursday night’s hearing, as well as Portland Dr. Paul Thomas, a prominent voice in the anti-vaccination movement.

He told lawmakers that they would create hundreds of cases of autism if they approved the bill. His contention, which was echoed by many others at the hearing, is based on debunked reports that claimed a link between vaccines and autism.

Note: debunked reports that claimed a link between vaccines and autism. There is no connection between vaccines and autism. Anyone who says this is either lying or misinformed. Hopefully the Oregon legislature will pass House Bill 3063.

Like I said, the health of children is way more important than allowing their parents to act on their false beliefs about the dangers of vaccines.

March 03, 2019

Today's Sunday Statesman Journal has a caustic letter to the editor regarding the recent City Council decision to kill the Salem River Crossing/Third Bridge project on a 6-3 vote.

I couldn't find the letter on the newspaper's web site, so wasn't able to leave a comment telling Rose Treasure how much I disagreed with what she said -- which was full of falsehoods.

So to set the record straight from my perspective, and blow off some irritated steam, here's my responses (in red) to Rose's letter, complete with links to actual facts.

West Salem is on the short end of the third bridge decision

To the people writing to the editor, crowing about their bridge win -- you are crowing and patting themselves on the back for endangering the lives of your neighbors, your little sibling, over the bridge.

Huh? Some people have expressed their support for the vote by a clear majority of the City Council to pull the plug on a poorly planned bridge project that deserved its nickname of Billion Dollar Boondoggle. What you call "crowing" others call praise for a wise decision.

You're congratulating yourselves and the do nothing city council for, well, doing nothing, a decision which hurts property values, damages life quality, and puts everyone on this side of the river in danger of being cut off.

It's hard to see how property values in West Salem are harmed by a decision to kill a bridge project that had no funding, would have required tolling on both the new bridge and existing bridges, and would have taken many years to build -- if that ever happened.

Congratulations. You're a big bully, and you forced us to accept your will.

The City Council is composed of eight councilors and a mayor elected by Salem voters. Six of the nine members of the City Council made campaign promises to oppose a Third Bridge. Doing what you promised citizens you would do isn't bullying. It is what elected officials should do: keep their word.

Also, who is "us"? The City Council represents all of Salem. Bridge supporters who live in West Salem seem to feel a sense of entitlement. Because this minority wants a Third Bridge, they believe that everybody in Salem should do their bidding. That isn't how democracy works.

After all, our lives after a major earthquake or a bridge-damaging event are not worth tearing down houses or moving streets, or even dealing with a little congestion in your neighborhood.

As noted above, no lives are threatened because the Third Bridge project was put to a well-deserved death.

It is over and we have our answer, so we should all shut our mouths now and let you talk about unity. No thank you.

I haven't heard any elected officials telling bridge supporters to shut their mouths. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Mayor and city councilors have been urging supporters of a Third Bridge to work on other ways to alleviate traffic problems in the downtown area. This is the "unity" being talked about. Everybody coming together to move forward in a positive manner.

This city council does nothing to benefit us.

That's a ridiculous statement. I recently wrote about accomplishments of the City Council. Some people may object to what the Council has done, but that's how politics works. Rarely is a decision applauded by everybody.

They took plastic bags and left us with nothing. Took streets and camp-ways from the homeless and left them with nothing. Took one bridge and left us with nothing. They are the 2019 do nothing council.

That is their legacy, and now yours, east Salemites. You did nothing, gave nothing, and produced nothing but damage. Congratulations.

Rose, what you call "damage," many others applaud as wise decision-making. Just because you don't like what the City Council has done, it makes no sense to call it nothing. That's amazingly self-centered.

I'm a liberal/progressive. I often (well, usually) disagree with what conservatives in Congress and the White House do when they're in control. However, I don't call what they do nothing. I call it bad decisions. Likewise with what conservatives on the Salem City Council did when they had a majority.

In our representative democracy, elections are how people can register their dissatisfaction with decisions made by elected officials. Meaning, vote them out. Or, register their satisfaction by re-electing the officials. Progressives have worked hard to move from a 1-8 City Council minority in 2014 to a 6-3 majority in 2019.

Elections have consequences. Like, killing the Third Bridge, as the six progressives promised voters.